1985 350cc Royal Enfeild standard Bobber – Karman Design, Delhi

Show some respect for the bobber! Long before the chopper came along and thought it was cool, the bobber ruled. It’s not just me. Everyone seems to be on the bobber bandwagon these days.
And I say, the more the merrier. The long-fork chopper are gone (again). And the minimalistic, do-it-yourself, low-budget attitude is just right for the times. I hope you never get sick of them. See the latest bobber by Karman Design is based in New Delhi who converted a old 1985’s standard Buller into exquisite Bobber!!

Karman Design is based in New Delhi, India, runs on bike customization workshop. Today’s featured build is on a 1985 350cc Royal Enfeild standard model. Their first build was in 2008 on the same bike and second one was in 2012 for a friend, this is the third build but first under the name of Karman Design.

“Orange county choppers & Biker build type series have been our source of inspiration. Every builder around the world has its own taste does his own innovations and uses the resources around him to fabricate the bike, this thing triggered us to see what lies in our taste if we have to build a bike for the consumer of this country.

KARMAN is a sanskrit word from where karma has originated, Karma means the sum of a person’s actions in this & previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate. In a way all our past and present builds experience will help us in our upcoming builds.

We are 2 of us who balance well between the Art and Engineering, thats why we call ourself Artistic Engineers. There are lot of other people who contributed on this build without which this motorcycle would not have been there.

This bike is a 1985 Standard 350cc Royal Enfield model. I(Ritesh) have been riding this bike for last 9 years. She has been traveling all the way from my uncle’s garage then to my elder brother and then to me and i have worked on it twice. And both the times she came out nice and taught me alot about handling a machine with care.

Our vision for this build was to keep things minimalist and elegant with some innovation involved. Idea was to keep a mix of vintage & contemporary design into a bobber style.
So the first buy was a pair of 100 spoke rim and Pirelli tyres (F-120/70 18″ & R-140/70 19″), we kept the chassis and the engine as same with no alterations to it. Then came the mock-up stage for the Tank, Side panels & battery box. I am my self an Industrial designer so spend a lot of time in giving the shape for the tank and maintaining the flow and continuity to the form that plays in the overall bike. I wanted the bike to have a leaning posture so kept the tank also a bit leaning forward to go with the posture of the rider. Side panels(tool box) was also kept in the same posture to flow along the form of the tank. Battery box has a metal base with a leather covering over it to keep it stuck to its place. As the bike was meant to have a urban city look so the fenders were kept very close to the tyres giving it a very elegant look. The innovation part that we did here was with the Ignition key, instead of using a regular standard turn key we modified the wiring and used a 3.5mm jack extender(6.3mm) as
the key (details in the pic).

We used a glossy black color for this bike so as to highlight the graphic part. Instead of using pinstripes we used strokes (strokes that built up while sketching the concept for the bike) in gold. The strokes actually helped give bike that elegant minimal identity. Most of the electrical parts & accessories are from the stock but we fabricated the Kick pedal, Gear shift lever & both the foot rest. We kept it untreated which makes them stand out in front of the whole design.

As we have been working on this bike keeping our regular 9 hours job, so it took us almost 6 months to finish this project. It was tiring frustrating at some moments but it paid off really well as per our expectations.

Our next project will be inspired from Akrapovic design, cant say on which bike but yes it gonna get soon out there.”
Contact
Karman Design
+91 9717929432
New Delhi